


In Living Colour

by Della19



Series: The Rainbow Connection [2]
Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Companion Piece, Fix-It, M/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 20:30:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3424574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Della19/pseuds/Della19
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Colour,” Arthur tells him once, an eyebrow raised warningly over a sniffer of brandy, “Is distracting.” And the Harry who is twenty-one only nods, and takes a sip of the grey brandy in his hand.  He intends to be a Kingsman until it kills him.  He cannot imagine colours will be a problem he will have to face.  </p><p>And then, years later Harry is forty, and he knows that blood is red and that somewhere in London there is a fifteen year old boy with very blue eyes.  Yes, he thinks, burying that thought deep, deep away where it belongs, he finally knows what Arthur meant.</p><p>Colour is distracting.  </p><p>Harry's POV for my soulmate colour AU (prompted on tumblr by nikirari) Paint With All the Colours of the Wind.  Companion piece to that fic, Eggsy/Harry and fix-it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Living Colour

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Жизнь в цвете](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4390343) by [IryStorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IryStorm/pseuds/IryStorm)



> Disclaimer: No, not mine.

***************************************

_Don't think of colour as a little thing. Think of it as one of the greatest we know, and rejoice in it, train yourself to see it everywhere, to know its perfect harmonies and splendid contrasts, its delicate gradations, its depth and power. A deal of our happiness comes through colour, and much more can come if we will let it._

\- Hildegarde Hawthorne, "The Fun--and the Immensity--of Little Things," St. Nicholas, vol. 48

***************************************

Harry is twenty-one when he joins the Kingsmen, and his world is quite _grey_. This, he finds, is rather par for the course for a Kingsman; colour is a boon in the spy game, but soulmates - attachments - are not, and so the Kingsman knights see in _grey_ , and manage themselves accordingly.

“Colour,” Arthur tells him once, an eyebrow raised warningly over a sniffer of brandy, “Is distracting.”

Arthur, Harry will learn years later, lost his soulmate six months after meeting her. A mugging gone wrong when she was coming to meet Arthur for dinner, and for a few pounds and a twitchy trigger finger, Arthur lives a life of _greys_ once again. The mugger, apparently, was a street thug, stealing because it was that or starve.

With hindsight, this knowledge will be particularly _clear_.

But the Harry who is twenty-one and has a _grey_ dog named Mr. Pickles knows none of this. That Harry only nods, and takes a sip of the _grey_ brandy in his hand. He intends to be a Kingsman until it kills him.

He cannot imagine colours will be a problem he will have to face.

***************************************

_Blue._

It is the first colour that Harry sees, and he remembers it even as he is hit by a kaleidoscope of colour in the apartment of his dead protege’s family. And yet thankfully he still speaks, even as reels, oversensitive and overwhelmed to all these familiar things made foreign with the addition of colour.

His soulmate is in this room.

Not the widow, crying and angry, Harry knows and he cannot even be grateful for this because instead it is the _boy_ , shaking his toy and looking up at Harry with those _blue_ eyes.

Harry suddenly feels _ill_.

The woman throws the medal and his offer back at him, and although Harry would give anything to not even have to look at the _boy_ , he owes the memory of his father at least this. And so Harry crouches down, looks into eyes oh so _blue_ , and manages to give the medal with its _pink_ and _purple_ ribbon over, manages to to make his offer.

And then he _flees_.

***************************************

It is, Harry knows, not an unheard of thing. It is not even an uncommon thing. In a world populated by billions or people, there is naturally some variance in the age of soulmates. No one can guarantee to meet their other half when they are both of an appropriate age. It is just fate, luck, the roll of a die.

And yet, no matter what he tells himself, Harry’s hands shake as they try to flip the records of Lee Unwin, the almost Lancelot, in their _dark green_ folder.

_Seven_ , Harry reads, staring at the notes made of one Gary “Eggsy” Unwin. _Seven_.

Harry turns thirty-two next month.

Vomit, Harry learns, is a truly revolting _yellow_.

***************************************

In the end he pushes the file away, and banishes the thought from his mind, locks it deep down away in him, and there it will stay. Harry cannot pick his soulmate, but he can pick what he does with that knowledge, and so Harry, who has based his entire ideals on that of the nobility of a gentleman, chooses _nothing_. Eggsy will grow and become a man, become his own person independent of Harry; of his influence, of his eyes, of his very _thoughts_.

Harry will permit no other possibility.

And if, someday many years from now, that man decides he wants anything to do with Harry then he will be free to contact him, on his own terms, of his own _free will_.

He has his number.

***************************************

And yet, for all his resolve, life...complicates, after. Harry learns that Merlin wears _tan_ leather jackets, Lancelot prefers _blue_ ties, Mr. Pickles’ fur is a mixture of dark _brown_ and _black_ , that Harry himself has _brown_ eyes. That he inherited them and his _chestnut_ hair from his mother.

Blood, Harry learns, spilling forth from a wound he has inflicted, is _red_ , _red_ , _red_.

Harry does not stop, does not let it make him less of a Kingsmen, learns to conceal it away with all the other _dark_ , forbidden things, but he cannot say he ever comes to like _red_.

Sometimes, he does not hide it well enough.

“Are you quite alright, Galahad?” Arthur asks him once, a week after Harry returns from a mission where he’d had to avert his gaze from the carnage wrecked by their target, innocent people laying dead eyed everywhere, oh so _red_ , reigning in an arm chair by the fire, and Harry knows that his eyes are _green_ , and oh so shrewd.

Kingsmen, after all, do not see in colour. It is messy, and Harry knows now how much Arthur values the simplicity of order, of _grey_.

“Quite, Arthur, ” Harry says, voice level, perfectly calm, taking a sip of the _amber_ brandy in his glasses, and Arthur nods, apparently satisfied and frees him of that piercing  _green_ gaze.

Harry is forty, and he knows that blood is _red_ and that somewhere in London there is a fifteen year old boy with very _blue_ eyes.

Yes, he thinks, burying that thought back deep, _deep_ away where it belongs, he finally knows what Arthur meant.

Colour is _distracting_.

***************************************

Two years later, Harry meets Beth, an inn keeper who lives in a little village full of _green_ trees.

Beth has _gold_ hair and _blue_ eyes, and her smile is kind when she compliments the _brown_ of his eyes. Beth, he learns later over a lovely dinner, was a lawyer at a prestigious firm in the city, and it was there that she first laid eyes on her soulmate at a company party, another litigator at the firm.

And his lovely soulmate wife.

“I felt like an ambulance chaser, like some monster waiting there and hoping for something horrible to happen,” Beth confides to him once, _golden_ hair splayed on his bare chest, “So I had to get out, get away from that feeling.” And then, with a lazy gesture to both him, and to the inn around them, with a sad little smile, “So this is me, getting out.”

And this Harry understands, completely, because he too does not let himself think of him. Of the boy out there with those _blue_ eyes, seventeen this year. Because it he did, if he _looked_ , Harry fears he might be tempted by the beauty of youth, still not a man.

If he looks, Harry fears he might _want_.

And so Harry does not look, does not _think_. Harry will not allow himself to be made a monster by a quirk of fate.

Eggsy has his number. One day he will contact him, or he will not. Ten years on in a world with colour and Harry continues to refuse to let it be any other way.

He and Beth part ways a year or so later, and it is an amicable thing. A few years later, he learns that her soulmate is now a widow, and that she has returned to the city, chasing the hope of that better tomorrow.

“Oxfords not brogues?” a voice says on the recording Harry is given, male, no longer with the timber of a child but _remembered_ , no matter how much Harry pushed it away, and Harry thinks of _blue_ as his heart skips a beat.

Harry wishes her all the best of luck.

***************************************

It is a man who exits the police station, Harry is impossibly relieved to find, bewildered beneath his upturned _navy blue_ hat. A _young_ man, to be sure, with quite the chip on his shoulder, but a man none the less who follows him without complaint, sits and talks with him over a pint of Guinness, as pleasant a first date as Harry has had in a while.

And then there are the ruffians that interrupt them, and well...

When Harry sits back down, he is rather aware that he is quite guilty of showing off, wanting nothing more than those  _blue_ eyes to continue to look at him with some measure of what is perhaps _awe_.

Harry rather thinks he might be in a bit of trouble.

***************************************

Eggsy punches through the glass, aces his tests and sneaks his little _coffee_ coloured pug scraps from the table, and one night Harry wakes from his bed in the medical ward to see Eggsy slumped at his side, face half smushed adorably into the side of the slumbering pup.

Harry contemplates getting out the amnesia darts and just self-injecting away.

Merlin smirks at him when he finds them, _black_ eyebrows raised to almost dangerous levels and Harry cannot even bring himself to care.

If there was a war, Harry knows he has already lost.

That does not mean, of course, that he stops fighting.

***************************************

Harry offers to get Eggsy a suit, ostensibly as a reward for his success in training, and ignores powerfully his secondary motive of the desire to see Eggsy in a proper Kingsman suit as Eggsy steps into the shop, all the while looking at him like he hung the moon. And Harry nearly loses his mind and quips about “popping one’s cherry,” and then desperately tries to cover up his momentary insanity with a lesson in shoes and the appeal of _golden_ hand grenade lighters.

Eggsy’s cheeks, when he blushes, are a too appealing shade of _pink_. He thinks it is perhaps only Valentine’s appearance, the glaring _white_ of his awful hat clashing dreadfully with the pinstriped _black_ of his tails that stops him from pushing Eggsy into dressing room one and ruining all his hard work and resolve.

Harry has never been so glad to run into a megalomaniacal psychopath before in his life.

***************************************

Not until he is a Kingsman, becomes Harry’s mantra. Not until he is a Kingsman, he thinks, staring at Eggsy’s arse in his training gear. Not until he is a Kingsman, Harry reminds himself, untying Eggsy from the tracks, heart filled with pride and body _oh so_ close to Eggsy’s.

Not until he is a Kingsman, Harry thinks as he sips the martini that Eggsy has made for him, sitting in the comfort of his home and staring at the oh so tempting sight of Eggsy happy and comfortable here with him.

Not until they are _equals_.

Harry cannot turn back the hands of time, offer himself up young again, but he can offer this, the Kingsmen, as equality and Harry will allow himself to accept nothing less.

Eggsy’s lips are _pink_ as he sips his drink, and his eyes twinkle _blue_ , and Harry thinks, _not until he is a Kingsman_ and bites his cheek until he tastes blood.

***************************************

And then Eggsy doesn’t shoot the dog, and that mantra - that dream - crumbles, and Harry is terribly cruel in his disappointment, and it isn’t until he is on the plane that Harry truly realizes his mistake.

Eggsy didn’t shoot the dog because it is repugnant to him to consider harming what he loves, and Harry, in his carelessness has committed just this very sin. Sitting in that awful church in Kentucky, listening to only hatred, Harry promises that as soon as he gets back, he will right his wrong, and tell Eggsy what he truly means to him.

And then his gun in his hand is _black_ , and Harry has no room for thoughts of love in his mind.

***************************************

Valentine’s mind control is _red_ , _red_ , _red_ all blood and rage and _hate_ , and Harry watches himself do terrible things, _wants_ to do those things, his emotions, his thoughts no longer his own. He is hardly even himself after the bloodlust has passed, and he has staggered from the church, the sole survivor, and then he sees Valentine, the woman with her deadly _silver_ legs, and Valentine’s men, and Harry knows he is dead.

And so, with his last breath he thinks of Eggsy, of wasted time, of _regret_ , and of the _grey_ he has condemned Eggsy to.

And then Valentine fires, and there is only _blackness_.

***************************************

When Harry wakes when he was sure he never would again, the first thing he sees is that _oh so_ cherished shade of _blue_ , and so Harry lets his truth finally free after seventeen years of suppressing it. And when Eggsy’s response is to offer his hand to him, palm up and _blue_ eyes soft with emotion, Harry knows he has been given a second chance.

He curls his fingers into Eggsy’s, and promises he will not waste it.

And so, in a Kentucky hospital, Harry sits with his soulmate and watches as the _oranges_ and _yellows_ of the sunrise play off the contours of Eggy’s face as they mark the first day of the rest of their lives.

He can think of no more beautiful a distraction.

***************************************

FIN

***************************************

 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hey, did you know that I have like, a life, and soon a huge exam to study for? No, you wouldn’t know that, would you, because I am clearly not paying any attention to those things! This ship has officially started to consume my life. So, yeah, Harry’s POV for Paint With all the Colours of the Wind, because sure, I don’t need to sleep or study, why the hell not. *Sigh.* Thanks again to nikirari for the great prompt/graphic set, and as always enjoy, and comments feed the muse.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Rainbow Connection Series: the Podfics](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3674832) by [TheGroupofOne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGroupofOne/pseuds/TheGroupofOne)




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